Pranked
by fire and napalm
Summary: Oneshot. Shortly after the Marauders leave school, while Sirius and James are still in training to be aurors, they wake up one morning with expected hangovers, in an unlikely place...


PRANKED

"Sirius?"

"Mm? What now James?"

"Do you have any idea of where we are right now?"

"Not the foggiest." He stated blithely.

"Thought so."

"Why do you sound so satisfied with yourself?"

"Maybe you should take note of two things."

"… Those things being?" The tone his friend was taking was not promising anything too kind at the moment

"Your state of clothes, for one."

"… Completely and utterly nude. And I must say, it's refreshing to be that way." He could almost hear James rolling his eyes, but hey, it was the truth.

" –And where we are right now. And what being so 'pleasurably nude' is showing people." He now had the distinct impression that James was fighting off snickers, and failing.

So, Sirius finally opened his eyes.

And blinked. Twice.

"We've been pranked, haven't we?" Sirius noted, seeing a rather familiar vaulted ceiling and squinting his eyes as he remembered why his thoughts were moving so slow.

"Uh, yeah. We're presently in a rather suggestive situation." James noted, with a smile in his tone.

"And you're happy about this why?" Sirius still wasn't looking anywhere but up, playing with the feeling of a stuffed head cavity. "Whoo, how much did we drink last night? I'm unusually light headed. Also, I thought we were smart enough to not do so at the ministry." Another look at the roof yielded nothing for their state, so Sirius forced himself to sit up and blink blearily at James. His friend had grabbed the single sheet left on the bed to cover himself up.

"Apparently it was _far_ too much, if we can wake up in this situation, and not have been woken by them _moving_ us from wherever we fell asleep –as I don't think we did so together like this- removing our clothes and getting us here."

"Yeah, that does beg the question rather admirably." Sirius shook his head lightly to try and clear it. His Auror training, despite being only half done, was kicking in and he was now waking up quickly. He took in precisely what was around them with curious eyes.

The first thing he'd already noticed was that they were in the ministry, which was nice and empty at the moment, and that they were in the entrance hall, about fifty feet past the fountain of magical brethren. They were in an unrecognizable bed, naked –as he'd so cheerily noted earlier-, with only one sheet between them, and the sides of that bed were warded so they couldn't get off. He considered standing up to see if there was a top to it, but put it off for the moment in favour of seeing if there was anything else going on there.

Not much else was notable right then, except the unnerving, though not surprising, absence of their wands. James was similarly focused on looking around, and testing the wards slightly. He also stood up before Sirius did, checking to see if there was a roof to their enclosure. He found one, domed over them on all sides, and was he standing almost pouting in a hard-_not_-to-notice rather becoming pose when the large clock in the ministry tolled eight o'clock loudly enough to startle him into tripping – on top of Sirius, just as the first few people flooed in to work.

Sirius almost threw James off him and into the wall, his face turning a brilliant red echoed in James' own face. The workers looked over at the out-of-place bed and, as they approached, they saw, to their horror, that it was their superior Alastor Moody. He walked over rather stiffly, and surveyed the scene within with a wicked look to his face that made them both redden even more. They were dead silent, neither wanting to speak up at all, in the hopes that maybe something was a dream, or an illusion; thus Moody had to speak first to get a response.

"Your idea of a joke, or someone else's?"

Sirius sighed and inspected his nails before drawling a response.

" 'Course. Our sort don't get caught by such things."

James threw a pillow at him, followed by an only slightly amused glare.

"Of course Sirius. We believe you too. No, Moody, the only thing we had to do with this display was be part of it, without our consent."

"Thought so. Anything dangerous in there?"

"To anything other than our reputations, no. Not unless it's something in what's trapping us on this. We can't get off, not by the sides, under the mattress-" Sirius sat up and looked at him, startled. "I checked before you woke, Sirius- and the roof's domed. Our wands have gone the way of our clothes as well. I actually hope it was someone we both know, for that reason alone."

The other workers who'd arrived with Moody had wandered over, and were staring as well. Sirius had placed the pillow James had thrown at him on his lap, much as James had bunched the sheet in the same place on himself, and was throwing cocky grins in their direction. Moody was now circling the enclosure, muttering to himself as James lay back against the invisible wall, his eyes half shut.

Twenty minutes later, Moody had tried three times to cancel the spell -failing each despite his best ideas. Another dozen ministry personnel had arrived as well, and despite this both James and Sirius both began dozing against the shell wall. The next person to arrive was not a ministry worker. She'd been here before though, and her hair and eyes were unmistakable. Had Sirius and James not been sleeping they'd have recognized what was going on immediately. However, they were asleep, and the prankster would have one more laugh at their expense.

She vanished the wall, dropping both aurors-in-training onto their bare backs, and then she vanished the bed and all according bedding, replacing their clothes and wands –next to them, folded neatly, not on them- in the same breath before she apparated away just as quickly as the two barely began regaining their bearings, in front of a small, but still much larger audience than they would've liked at the ministry.

"Okay, what was that? _Other_ than disgraceful, Dog breath!" James yelled in embarrassed fury at Sirius, as he scrambled not for his clothes, but his wand, magicking the articles onto his back as soon as he had it in his hands, and then, hesitating only a moment, before doing the same for his disoriented friend.

" I believe that was your fiancée, James. She seems to be having a laugh at your expense." Moody rumbled, laughing richly at his trainee's expense, along with half the ministry. "And I think you two can miss a day today. Get the smell of stale alcohol and sweat off you."

Both Sirius and James flushed. They hadn't wanted it generally known that they'd been drinking, but it seemed that Moody wasn't easily fooled, particularly after them waking up in a display like that. Thank god no one had gotten pictures.


End file.
